


Flight

by arbitraryallegory



Series: Dissemble [2]
Category: BIRDMEN - 田辺イエロウ | Tanabe Yellow
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 14:24:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9076381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitraryallegory/pseuds/arbitraryallegory
Summary: Tsubame doesn't get it, and she doesn't think she even wants to.





	

Of course Tsubame knew that Karasuma and Kamo-chan had crushes on her. It was impossible to miss. She just wasn’t sure what she should do about it, so she defaulted to the easiest thing to do: nothing. And ignoring it seemed to work, miraculously.

(She didn’t think about how Takayama had apparently adopted the same sort of tactic with regards to her own crush. It was entirely possible, after all, that he simply didn’t notice. He was that sort of oblivious type. She actually found it kind of endearing.)

With Kamo-chan, the underlying awkwardness eventually smoothed out and he seemed to regard her more as a sibling, though he was still unfailingly gentle with her in his reckless, untactful way. Tsubame had always been the elder, the responsible one, and it was nice to feel like a little sister for once.

With Karasuma, however, the tension never really went away. It just shifted, what felt like very suddenly to her. One day their hands couldn’t brush together accidentally without Karasuma blushing and stuttering and finding something else to do immediately; the next she couldn’t look his way without finding him already looking back. But it wasn’t like before; careful and guarded still, but not really wistful. And now, she was usually the first to look away.

She didn’t get it. And if she were honest with herself, she didn’t really want to. She already felt like she was filled to the brim with anxieties, between everything happening at home, keeping up with her studies, and seeming to pull time out of thin air between the two of those for training with the Bird Club. There simply wasn’t room to worry about Karasuma and whatever was going through his head.

Then Takayama-kun disappeared and everything changed.

“I think Tsubame-chan should talk to him,” Kamo-chan said bluntly one night, before Karasuma arrived.

“Me?” Tsubame squeaked.

Kamo-chan gave her a thumbs-up and a wink, for good measure. “There’s no gloom the attention of a pretty girl can’t banish,” he declared.

Tsubame looked at Rei a bit desperately; of all people, he knew how awful she was at serious conversations. But he just shrugged, looking only a little skeptical. “At the very least, it couldn’t hurt.”

Tsubame fidgeted for a moment, nearly overwhelmed by the longing to refuse. She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to know why Takayama’s absence was having such a profound effect on Karasuma when she hadn’t even realized they were that close. She didn’t want to understand Karasuma’s feelings. She didn’t want his eyes on her, seeing her, knowing her, when she had no desire to do the same.

“Forget it,” came a clipped voice. Tsubame’s head snapped to the side so fast, she thought she might have given herself whiplash. Karasuma was on the ledge, already clad in his armor. He snickered at their dumbfounded looks. “Are you going to stand around talking uselessly in our limited practice time or are you going to actually _practice_?”

With that, he stepped backwards off the ledge in a way that still made something low in Tsubame’s stomach clench, wings be damned. It only relaxed several seconds later when his dark shape zoomed up and up, higher and higher until she couldn’t even see him against the night sky.

“Wait up, Ei-chan!” Kamo-chan called and leapt into the air. Rei-kun followed, and after a few more moments, Tsubame did as well.

 **How about a game of hide and seek**? Karasuma tweeted.

 **Who’s it**? Kamoda tweeted back. It was totally annoying that they could all do it except for her. It made her feel left out.

**Me. You have to the count of 50. One… two…**

Tsubame immediately put on a burst of speed. She didn’t know if it was his Ability or just his relentless personality, but Karasuma was very good at Hide and Seek; almost as good as Takayama.

Her heart skipped a beat, and she sent the thought to the back of her mind where she kept the worry for her absent crush. Compartmentalizing was good. Compartmentalizing kept her head above water.

She found a crevice between two buildings and darted in between, plastering herself tightly up against the shadows of an awning. Then she focused on diminishing her presence. That was the real focus of this exercise. Not all Birdmen were on their side, and it would be beneficial if they could control whatever broadcast signals they were sending out.

Karasuma was a dour little thing, but he had good ideas, she thought, a bit fondly despite her recent unease.

She was so busy focusing on her own body that she almost missed the movement of one of the shadows nearby. Too graceful to be natural, and she took off without squinting to make sure, heart pounding fast in her chest. If they couldn’t hide successfully, then the directive was to always, _always_ run.

She made it nearly a kilometer before Karasuma crashed into her back, sending them end over end into a manic freefall, wings and limbs tangled together. Finally, they managed to disengage and Karasuma shoved them away from each other so they each had enough room to extend their wings and catch themselves.

“Why haven’t you gone after him?” she burst out, panting, startling herself as much as Karasuma. They each hovered there, staring at each other, mouths open in shock. The only sound was the near silent _whoosh whoosh_ of their wings.

“I know you want to,” Tsubame said, looking away at last. That look was back in his eyes, the one that raised her hackles and made her want to lash out.

“He doesn’t want me to,” Karasuma said simply. “If he did, he’d let me feel him.”

“Maybe he’s out of range?” Tsubame hazarded.

Karasuma grinned at her, a wild and somehow unbearably sad thing. “He’s not.”

“Oh.” There wasn’t really anything left to say about it after that.

By mutual understanding, they began to drift in the direction of the sky terrace. Just before they reached it, Karasuma looked over at her and offered a half-smile. “Thanks,” he said.

“For what?”

Karasuma laughed softly. “For being so normal.”

He took off ahead before Tsubame could decide whether that had been a compliment or an insult. Knowing Karasuma, it might have been both or neither—or both and neither.

 **I don’t understand you, and I hope I never do,** she tried to tweet, defiant, hoping half-heartedly that this would be the time he heard her. But his head didn’t turn and he didn’t flinch.

She took a deep breath and began to move forward. If she didn’t calm down before she got there, it would be her putting that worried edge into Rei-kun’s expression instead of Karasuma, and she didn’t want that.

She ignored the small part of her that pointed out she probably understood Karasuma more than she wanted to admit. She was just better at running away than he was. And that was a thought she refused to dwell on, shoving it back with her worry and all the other troublesome emotions she didn’t want anyone seeing.

By the time she reached the sky terrace, she was smiling, boasting about holding out for nearly thirty minutes this time. If she felt eyes boring into her back, she ignored them, too.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure I like this one as much as I did Seige.


End file.
